Abstract
Inspired by Ronald Giere’s (1989, 1992) cognitive approach to scientific models, Cognitive Structural Realism (CSR) has presented a naturalist account of scientific representation (Beni, 2019a). CSR characterises the structure of theories in terms of cognitive structures. These are informational structures embodied in the brains of (allegedly individual) scientists. CSR accounts for scientific representation in terms of the dynamical relationship between the organism and its environment. The proposal has been criticised on account of its negligence of social aspects of scientific practice. The present paper aims to chart out a reply to the objection. It shows that cognitive structures do not need to be put inside the brains of single individuals. Cognitive structures are redefined as extended structures in distributed cognitive systems (such as a scientific group) under Free Energy Principle.
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Notes
There are other flourishing instances of cognitive models approach (Chandrasekharan, 2009; Chandrasekharan & Nersessian, 2015; Giere, 2002a; Nersessian, 2003). Some of the recent instances are mainly concerned with applying distributed cognition to scientific practice, whereas CSR is concerned specifically with the issue of scientific representation based on scientific insights from the free energy principle and predictive processing. These diverse approaches could be seen as complementary rather than rivals.
I thank one of the reviewers of this paper for bringing this point to my attention.
Ramstead et al. define the self-organising system's ‘intrinsic' information geometry in terms of trajectories in phase space over time (Ramstead et al., 2020, p. 6). the system’s ‘extrinsic’ information geometry, which “refers to belief distributions over external states”(Friston et al., 2020b, p. 16). Structural representations can be defined in terms of structured similarities that are discerned actively (via active inferences) between intrinsic and extrinsic informational geometries. Structural representations are beliefs or probability distributions about external states (Ramstead et al., 2020, p. 10). They are embedded in statistical or generative models of nonequilibrium steady-state density towards which the system evolves (Ramstead et al., 2020, p. 9).
It may be in vain to expect from semantic devices (such as partial isomorphic relations) to substantiate the metaphysical component of SR (there are philosophical arguments to accomplish that goal). However, ideally, we could also use the representational capacity of formal structures that regiment the structure of theories to establish the realist part of SR (or so does CSR indicates).
I am defending a moderate version of extendedness. In the sense that I simply follow Giere to assome that there is no sharp divide between the individual cognitive processes and social ones (Giere, 2002b, p. 296). As such, I would agree that “the emphasis on finding and describing "knowledge structures" that are somewhere "inside" the individual encourages us to overlook the fact that human cognition is always situated in a complex sociocultural world and cannot be unaffected by it” (Hutchins, 1995a). However, the activity of the extended cognitive system, e.g., the scientific community, can be partially decomposable to the cognitive activity of scientists (see Beni, 2020). I will clarify this notion in the paper in terms of mereological relations between Markov blankets at various scales.
The relation between internal states of the organism and its external states can be modelled in terms of sensory and extrasensory attractors. Free energy gets minimized when parameters in sensory and extrasensory attractors of two birds become the same.
Another concern that can to be addressed later is about the veracity of the structure of generative models, given that scientific representations are playing a representational part, whereas songs are not representations. We do not address this worry here. I refer the reader to Steven French’s comparison of scientific and artistic representations, where he convincingly argues that even conceptual art (songs, paintings, etc.,) can represent, if only in a highly idealized and abstract way (see French, 2003, p. 1478 for an excellent discussion).
This statement of the situation assumes that there is a distinction between regimentation of scientific representations in shared generative models, and their realization in external media, such as linguistic and model-theoretic structures.
I thank one of the reviewers for bringing this point to my attention.
I thank one of the reviewing for point this out.
In more technical terms, “It is thus only when the properties of the collective dynamics feed back into the scale below, forming a free energy-minimizing system at the scale of the whole system, that it is possible to talk meaningfully of ensemble Markov blankets—blankets whose self-evidencing dynamics result in an overall self-sustaining organization” (Kirchhoff et al., 2018, p. 8).
Zamani et al. (2020) present an interesting hierarchical model of evolution and transformation of scientific knowledge as well as its transmission and preservation over a period of time in early modern area. In the absence of recent citation metrics, Zamani et al. embarked on constructing network models of collection of 356 introductory university textbooks—collectively called Sphaera corpus—which were used in the astronomy and cosmology classes in liberal arts faculties across Europe in early modern period. In this context, to account for the evolution of science, Zamani et al.’s present hierarchical network models of interactions between these text books at six different levels which are separated based on the content of the books. The constituents of the system are books and treatise rather than scientists. However, the same approach could be applied to the analysis of groups of collaborative scientists (albeit this would increase the complexity of the situation).
Another promosing stream of research consists of Hampton et al.’s (2021) attempt at accounting for epistemic appraisals at the level of meta-cognition of concepts as communications characterised in terms of confidence rating, inductive inferences, people’s predictions of their interlocutors’ reactions, etc. Accounting for communication of concepts in one’s mind in terms of reducing prediction error–which is equal to increasing informativeness and increasing confidence–seems to speak directly to FEP’s account of sub-personal mechanisms.
A theme that could be developed later is that CSR’s conception of scientific knowledge could be developed along the lines of knowing-how. That is to say, scientific practice could be construed under CSR as a form of anti-intellectualist knowing-how which cannot be reduced to knowing-that (see Palermos & Tollefsen, 2018, p. 113 for explanation).
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Max Jones’s for his insightful review of the book and to Karl Friston for his valuable remarks on new developments in FEP’s account of social communications. I also sincerely thank several anonymous reviewers of this journal and the editors for their insightful comments.
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Beni, M.D. Inflating the social aspects of cognitive structural realism. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 11, 78 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-021-00401-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-021-00401-5